[drupal-docs] opml vs weboutliner?

[Boris Mann]

On 29-Mar-05, at 5:11 AM, Morbus Iff wrote:

>> I'm also against it as a doc format. But I'm for it as a format that:
>> * allows offline mass-editing of hierarchically organized text/HTML
>> based chunks of content (where mass-editing also means re-ordering of
>> * could easily sync back to the Drupal mothership
>> * has existing, easy to use, cross-platform tools for editing
>
> Alright, fair enough. Are we looking for patch-like control at all?

No, that would be CVS and a completely offline format.

>> I'd use MS Word and it's outline feature if I could. I just
>> immediately thought of OmniOutliner and other such tools, with OPML
>> just being a sort of secondary interchange format underneath.
>
> There's also outliner.sf.net, which runs on Windows (I've not tested 
> it there) and Linux (runs great on Fedore Core 3). It may not make it 
> past the "JAVA IS EVIL!" folks though.
>
>> Other than not liking OPML itself/perhaps some of the people connected
>> with it, can someone think of a format/tool that could meet these
>
> Define "sync back to the Drupal mothership". At this point, I'm not 
> seeing any reason to use OPML (or any sort of XML) as opposed to just 
> using a regular old text editor and regular old text. How would the 
> syncing work in OPML? How would the core docs understand which section 
> of the new data is which? We'd have to use IDs of some sort, of none 
> of the OPML editors mentioned allow control over that.

The "syncing" is offline editing. So here's the use case. I go to the 
"top" of the book hierarchy (e.g. /book) and there is an "OPML" link 
next to each root book.

I download an entire book hierarchy using that link, and open it in my 
local outliner.

I re-arrange the order of docs, edit some pages, insert some new pages.

I save the file, navigate to an import function, and import the file, 
specifying the root where the synchronization should happen. Yes, still 
might need to include IDs or some textual markers at the top of each 
page.

As stated before....I'd really, really like to have offline (or at 
least easy/mass) editing of book pages with an import/export function. 
If there other ways to achieve this without OPML...great. The key 
features are drag n drop re-ordering of content using an outliner. Text 
editing is (somewhat) secondary.

--
Boris Mann
http://www.bryght.com